Saturday, February 28, 2015

SEIU-UHW was blown out in the election despite
collusion from the hospital’s management as a result of SEIU-UHW’s
sweetheart deal with the California Hospital
Association.

Well, an employee at Mission Hospital sent along the
following report about workers’ experience with SEIU:

The union organizers
(sometimes 20+) completely took over our cafeteria every day for at least 2
weeks, sometimes with large purple union posters, while providing trays of free
food, fish tacos, and stale purple cupcakes during lunch. The UNAC organizers
also provided a "show" of verbal confrontations with CNA organizers
in the parking lot. The entire
experience was so incredibly unprofessional.
Yup, they also had a purple clown in the cafeteria one day, and a purple
cheerleader in the parking lot. It was shocking.

A purple clown? And purple cheerleader? Are you kidding?

Nope.

SEIU organizer at Mission Hospital

It turns out that SEIU-UHW actually dressed up its
organizers as clowns and cheerleaders to, uhh, recruit support for the union.

One hospital staffer sent this blurry photo of SEIU-UHW’s
purple clown as he paraded through the hospital.

Does anyone know the identity
of this bozo?

Of course, SEIU-UHW’s reliance on costumed child gimmicks shouldn't
surprise us. Remember… this is the same union that dressed up its organizers as
a Purple
Barney and an Easter
Bunny during earlier NLRB elections in Northern California.

It reportedly was Cass
Gualvez, who is a "Staff Director" at SEIU-UHW and was also
appointed by Regan to SEIU-UHW’s "Executive Committee," the union's its
top governing body. In 2013, Gualvez was paid $140,757.

In 2009, Gualvez conspired
with executives at Alta Bates Summit
Medical Center to fire a 31-year hospital employee and union member, which was later documented in a 50-page
ruling by an NLRB Administrative Law Judge.

Gualvez, whose brain apparently approximates that of a
six-year-old, is quite clueless. In fact, she’s so clueless she thought SEIU-UHW
was headed towards a landslide election victory at Mission Hospital last month.

SEIU organizer at St. Louise Hospital

Here's what an employee at Mission Hospital reports:

SEIU also had a large
purple RV parked down the road. They
planned to drive it to our campus parking lot for staff to gather for some sort
of celebration when they won (we called it the "Barney Mobile"). SEIU
was really expecting to win, but instead they had to drive it home!

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Today, SEIU-UHW’s Dave
Regan suffered a smackdown that leaves little doubt about who butters his biscuits.

Two months ago, as 3,500 Kaiser employees prepared for a weeklong
strike to protest the understaffing of Kaiser's mental health clinics across
California, Regan took the unprecedented step of teaming
up with John
Nelson (Kaiser Permanente's Vice President of Public Relations and
Communications) to launch a coordinated P.R. attack against the workers.

An article in "Modern Healthcare" featured matching
quotes from Regan and Nelson dismissing clinicians’ claims about the understaffing.

Members of the
National Union of Healthcare Workers are accusing healthcare giant Kaiser
Permanente of understaffing its mental-health services, and they're threatening
to strike if their issues aren't resolved… But Dave Regan, president of the
SEIU-UHW, which represents 45,000 Kaiser employees across the state, dismissed
NUHW's concerns, saying that the staffing problem “was a limited one and is
completely solved.” (Modern Healthcare, “Kaiser
Mental-Health Staffing under Fire Again,” December 4, 2014)

“Completely solved."

Hmmmm.

This morning, government investigators released a 33-page
report detailing the results of their months-long investigation into Kaiser's
mental health services. They cited Kaiser for multiple violations of state law,
including understaffing its mental health clinics and forcing patients to
endure lengthy, illegal waits for care. Investigators are contemplating
additional fines against Kaiser – that’s on top of the $4 million fine that
Kaiser already paid last September.

Dave Regan, SEIU-UHW

In an article published today by the Los Angeles Times, Shelley
Rouillard (the Director of California’s Department of Managed Health Care) directly refuted Regan's earlier
statement:

For the second time in
two years, California regulators have faulted HMO giant Kaiser Permanente for
causing mental health patients to endure long delays to get treatment… In
Northern California, patients didn’t get initial or follow-up appointments
within the required time frame of 10 to 15 business days in 22% of the records
reviewed… “That is not a good performance,” Rouillard said.
“Fundamentally it comes down to there are not enough providers in the Kaiser
system to serve everyone who needs mental health services." (Los
Angeles Times, “State
again faults Kaiser Permanente for mental health treatment delays,” February
24, 2015)

So… Regan not only pimps for the Boss, he knowingly lies
for the Boss, and gladly throws patients and healthcare workers under the bus.

Friday, February 20, 2015

Today, SEIU-UHW’s
Dave Regan suffered a thumping defeat when the California Attorney General approved
the sale of six hospitals owned by the Daughters
of Charity Health System to Prime
Healthcare. The AG rejected SEIU-UHW’s bid to transfer the hospitals to Blue Wolf Capital Partners, a private
equity firm in New York City.

For many months, Regan has waged an all-out effort to block
the sale to Prime after that company refused to sign Regan's sweetheart
unionization deal with the California
Hospital Association. During a tape-recorded SEIU
conference call last May, Regan famously announced he would wage a campaign
to bring Prime "to heel,” according to the Los
Angeles Times.

Last fall, Regan launched an expensive political, PR, and "Astroturf”
campaign to block Prime from buying the hospitals. The campaign included buying TV ads and busing hundreds of purple-shirted homecare
workers from three counties away to fill the chairs in the Attorney General's public
hearings that were intended to gather input from the local community.

Regan was forced to bus in the homecare workers because his position was wildly unpopular among
SEIU-UHW’s 1,600 members at the six hospitals. Without the sale, the hospitals
would likely go bankrupt and put the 1,600 workers’ jobs and pensions in jeopardy.

Midway through the process, workers also learned that Regan had
secretly signed a backroom deal with Blue Wolf Capital to cut
workers' pay and benefits by 15% if Blue Wolf got ahold of the hospitals.

When the Attorney General finally conducted hearings
on the proposed sale, SEIU-UHW’s own members stood at the microphone and voiced
their opposition to Regan. They also delivered
petitions signed by more than half of SEIU-UHW’s members opposing Regan's position.

At O'Connor Hospital in San Jose, Calif. nearly half of SEIU-UHW’s shop stewards resigned their
positions to protest Regan's decision to ignore the membership and their livelihoods.

Below, check out a 30-second video of a former SEIU-UHW Chief Shop Steward
who describes how SEIU used its members as "pawns" in its own
political game. He says: “I'm ashamed to say that I'm an SEIU member because
they're not looking out for their own members.”

That's not all.

After losing the support of his own members,
Regan also lost the support of other SEIU unions in California. For example,
both SEIU Local 121 and SEIU Local 87publicly supported the sale of the hospitals to Prime, and formally opposed Regan's position.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

SEIU-UHW officials
famously backed the New York private equity fund in its attempt to take over a
chain of six California hospitals called the Daughters of Charity Health System. But even as SEIU-UHW staffers parade
around in blue shirts bearing the private equity firm’s name, workers are running
the other way.

At O'Connor Hospital,
a majority of SEIU-UHW members signed petitions opposing SEIU-UHW’s stance on
the hospital sale.

And nearly half of SEIU-UHW’s shop stewards at O'Connor
Hospital have resigned their positions to protest Regan's actions. Other
workers have decided to stop paying dues to SEIU-UHW.

SEIU-UHW responded by dispatching Val Tagawa and other purple staffers to the hospital. One worker writes:

Since the [Attorney
General's] hearing at OCH, we have had a concerted effort from SEIU (Val Tagawa
and others) to harass folks about the issue. They have been generally met with
"Don't bother me" type responses from workers, and on one occasion security
was called and ended up escorting the SEIU stooges from the Cafeteria after
employees complained to security.

Tagawa has reportedly been busy scouting for the best local bar and is well known around the hospital for
the not-so-fragrant bouquet of her breath.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle
have editorialized against SEIU-UHW’s position. The California Attorney General,
who's responsible for approving or rejecting the proposed sale of the six
hospitals, is supposed to make a decision by February 20.

One more note: Tasty earlier mentioned that SEIU-UHW
officials have connections to Blue Wolf Capital. It turns out that the
connections are multiple.

Mike Musuraca, Blue Wolf Man

First, Mike Musuraca
(the Managing Director of Blue Wolf Capital) reportedly has connections to Gerry Hudson and Tom Woodruff (Vice Presidents of SEIU International)
as well as other top SEIU officials. Musuraca has worked as an advisor for SEIU’s Change to Win. He formerly served as an
Assistant Director in the Department of Research and Negotiations at AFSCMEDistrict Council 37 in New York City and was a trustee of the New York City Employees Retirement System.

In addition, it appears that David Miller, a staffer at SEIU-UHW, played a role in SEIU-UHW’s
nefarious backdoor deal with Blue Wolf. Miller also comes from New York, where he formerly served as the Research
Director at SEIU’s 1199 New York. After parachuting into California, he has assumed the over-inflated job title of “Assistant to the President for
Strategic Campaigns” at SEIU-UHW ...presumably with an over-inflated salary.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Yesterday, Dana Cope
-- a member of SEIU’s International Executive Board (IEB) and the Executive
Director of SEIU’s State Employees
Association of North Carolina (SEANC) -- stepped down after a North Carolina district attorney requested
a criminal investigation into his alleged financial corruption, according
to the Raleigh
News and Observer.

According to the newspaper:

Cope faces an inquiry
from the State Bureau of Investigation for his handling of SEANC finances. The
national union with which SEANC is affiliated, the Service Employees
International Union, said it is taking the allegations of financial misconduct
seriously.

Cope resigned just two days after the News and Observer
published an article about his alleged financial corruption. SEANC, which is known as “SEIU Local 2008,” represents approximately 55,000 current and retired North Carolina State
employees.

Cope is an example of SEIU’s so-called “21st century unionism.”
Just like Andy
Stern and Dave
Regan, Cope is way more "business" than "labor." For
example, Cope was a Vice-President of the Texas Future Business Leaders and has
carefully transformed SEANC into an insurance company that only masquerades
as a union.

In fact, Cope’s corruption scandal was uncovered by a union
member who criticized one of Cope’s latest schemes, whereby union members
purchase consumer electronics by paycheck deduction at elevated prices.

In an
earlier post, Tasty revealed an internal SEIU memo that reports that SEANC’s
"primary function" is "selling insurance." The memo notes
that SEANC’s staff consists of 14 insurance salespeople… and only 3 union
representatives for its 55,000 members.

As far as the breaking news about Cope's corruption scandal...

Cope is one
of SEIU's 21st Century labor leaders

According to an investigation published earlier this week by
the News and Observer, Cope improperly funneled hundreds of thousands of
dollars from the union's bank account into his own pocket by using a creative
maneuver. He hired construction and landscaping companies to renovate his home,
and then instructed union staffers to hire the exact same companies and pay them
more than $350,000 for apparently no-show projects.

There were also phony invoices. “One check for
nearly $19,000 was justified by a phony invoice and was made out to a defunct
computer company,” according to the News and Observer, which also reports the
following:

Cope and SEANC’s
general counsel admit the memo is phony but will not explain beyond saying it’s
a personnel matter.

Oh, and there's also the personal flying lessons. It turns
out that Cope really likes flying planes. So… Cope had SEIU members pay
$21,000 for his flight school, according to the News and Observer.

So why were SEIU members paying for Cope’s flying lessons?
Cope told the News and Observer ‘it allows him to fly with a flight instructor
and to travel cheaply and efficiently on SEANC business.’ That's some serious
bullsh*t, right?

And it sounds like more skeletons will soon come tumbling
out of Cope's overcrowded closet.

Cope charged
SEIU members for flying lessons

According to the News and Observer, SEIU allowed Cope
"to put thousands of dollars of personal spending each year on SEANC credit
cards. Cope has given contradictory accounts about how much of the money he has
repaid…”

One of the expenses that Cope charged to the
union's credit card is "eyebrow waxing," according to the News and Observer.

Meanwhile, Cope has a history of problems with credit cards.
Like buying too much sh*t with them. The newspaper reports that, in 2011, Cope
filed for personal bankruptcy to wipe out $109,000 in credit-card debt.

As the scandal unfolded in the press this week, Cope vigorously
defended his home repairs, flying lessons, credit card bills, etc. as harmless and above-board. However, once the district attorney asked the State Bureau
of Investigation to launch a criminal inquiry into his spending, Cope decided
to throw in the towel.

Yesterday, he held a 90-second press conference and all but admitted his guilt, saying:

“In recent days, I’ve
come to realize that in carrying out the duties of my job, I have blurred the
line between my personal life and my professional life.”

Cope has close ties to SEIU’s top officials.

Not only has he
served on SEIU’s IEB for seven years with the likes of “Diamond" Dave
Regan and David “See you at the races” Holway, but he reportedly worked with Andy Stern, Anna Burger, Tom Woodruff
and Mary Kay Henry to negotiate
SEANC’s 2008 merger with SEIU.

At SEIU’s International Convention in 2008, Andy Stern used a
ridiculous gimmick to announce that the merger with 55,000-member SEANC had helped
boost SEIU’s membership to more than 2 million members.

Monday, February 9, 2015

That's where SEIU-UHW
lost an NLRB election for approximately 1,000 workers on January 29th despite having the
Boss's support through Regan's sweetheart deal with the California Hospital Association (CHA).

Well… Tasty learned that SEIU-UHW lost an NLRB election
at another hospital on the same exact day.

The second election was for a small “residual” unit of workers
at Southern California Hospital in
Culver City, a 420-bed hospital that used to be called Brotman Medical Center.

Many of the hospital's workers have been members of SEIU-UHW
for a long time. On January 29th, SEIU-UHW tried to unionize the hospital's stationary
engineers, biomedical engineers and others. It's unclear whether Regan
triggered this election under his backroom deal with the Hospital Association.

Whatever the case, the workers said, “No thanks.” Apparently,
they did their research on SEIU-UHW and voted to reject SEIU-UHW by a 3-to-1 margin.

Thursday, February 5, 2015

According to Tasty's sources, SEIU President Mary Kay Henry backed the transfer of
SEIU-UHW’s homecare workers to SEIU Local 6434, which currently represents homecare and nursing home workers in California.

Tasty hears that when the news first reached him, SEIU-UHW President
Dave Regan lost control of his
bowels.

Why?

First of all, it's well known that Regan is plotting to seize
Mary Kay Henry’s position at the Purple Palace. A transfer of homecare workers
means Regan will lose the "delegated votes" of these 60,000 homecare
members during future elections inside SEIU. (In SEIU, rank-and-file union
members don't get to vote for SEIU’s president and International
Executive Board -- instead, members' votes are assigned or "delegated"
to local SEIU officials, who then cast the votes of tens of thousands of rank-and-file
workers.)

Secondly, a transfer of the homecare workers means less dues
money for "Wall Street" Dave.

Thirdly, it changes the political equation inside SEIU-UHW.
Regan has relied on the votes of homecare workers to win SEIU-UHW’s internal elections.
Without their votes, he’ll become more vulnerable to challengers.

So what’s Dave gonna do?

His first move appears to be to stall Mary Kay Henry’s
plan. He reportedly requested that Henry put the transfer on hold for six months because, says Regan, the loss of the public-sector homecare workers will somehow diminish the "bargaining
strength" of SEIU-UHW’s Kaiser workers, who are set to begin negotiations for a
new contract in April.

Not exactly a persuasive argument, right? It's especially
lame because SEIU-UHW’s upcoming contract negotiations with Kaiser Permanente are so tightly rigged that SEIU officials have already
calendared the precise day in June when they will stand arm-in-arm with Kaiser execs and announce an "historic contract settlement." In fact, Regan and Kaiser’s executives have
already scheduled the exact dates for SEIU-UHW workers' contract ratification votes. (More on
this in a future post.)

What will happen if Regan resists the transfer of the
homecare workers?

Tasty hopes that Mary Kay Henry and the IEB are busily preparing the legal papers to impose an emergency trusteeship on Regan. Of course,
once the trusteeship is implemented, Mary Kay Henry can simply ignore the order
to transfer the homecare workers for, uhh, at least a decade.

Remember, this is SEIU… where workers are pawns on a purple Monopoly
board that’s shamelessly used by SEIU officials to pursue their personal quests for
power, fame and money.

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